Request By:
Honorable James Terry Hodges
Attorney at Law
108 North Reed Street
Columbia, Kentucky 42728
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Walter C. Herdman, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
This is in answer to your letter of November 18 in which you refer to KRS 95.700 providing that the police officers of cities of the fifth class are to be appointed for terms not exceeding two (2) years and shall be reappointed if they have not reached the retirement age unless sufficient cause is shown. You further relate that the city of Columbia, a city of the fifth class, does not operate its police department under a retirement or civil service program. Under the circumstances, you raise the following question:
". . . I would like to know to what extent a new legislative body in a fifth class city can terminate employment of police officers and whether or not sufficient cause as used in K.R.S. 95.765 for city's having adopted civil service and pension plans? . . ."
Since the police department of the city of Columbia operates under KRS 95.700, it is controlled by the terms of subsection (2) even though it does not have a retirement program which is optional. The terms of this section of the statute would prohibit the newly elected legislative body from terminating the employment of any of its police officers except for cause. We are enclosing a number of opinions covering this subject, namely OAG 74-182, OAG 75-202, and OAG 76-435. The latter opinion discusses the meaning of the term "cause" and cites the case of
Bourbon County Board of Education v. Darnaby, 314 Ky. 419, 235 S.W.2d 66 (1950).
Though the grounds for removal of police officers operating under the civil service program referred to in Ch. 95, particularly KRS 95.765, would constitute legal cause, such specified violations would not be exclusively binding on the city legislative body since the police department is not under civil service.